The earth's scream outlasted the tremor.
Selene clung to the ritual knife as the courtyard buckled, its flagstones splitting along ancient fault lines. The ground beneath the keep's great hall collapsed first...wood and stone plunging into a yawning void that smelled of wet graves and lightning.
Then the altar revealed itself.
Not carved stone. Not sacred geometry.
A cage of fused skeletons, their interlocked bones forming a dome large enough to contain a god. The remains still pulsed with faint blue light where the First Shadow's power had once touched them centuries ago.
Kael hauled himself up from the well's ruins, his shadows lashing at the corrupted wolves circling them. "That's not a prison," he breathed. "That's a feeding ground."
Cyrus limped to Selene's side, his bowstring snapped. "The legends were wrong. Our ancestors didn't trap her here to protect us..." His burned hands trembled. "They kept her as a weapon."
The knife in Selene's grip grew heavier. The markings along its blade now mirrored those on her arms...and they were bleeding.
Above them, the Blood Moon pulsed like a diseased heart.
The First Shadow's Voice
"Clever children."
The whisper slithered from the knife, from the altar, from the very air itself. The corrupted wolves froze mid-snarl, their too-many eyes rolling back in unison.
"They bred you for me," the voice continued, sweet as a lullaby. "Generation after generation, refining the vessel. Until you, little shadow."
Selene's vision doubled.
Suddenly she saw the keep not as ruins, but as it once stood...proud and whole, its walls hung with banners bearing the same symbols now carved into her flesh. A line of shadow wolves knelt before the altar, each generation stronger than the last.
Her mother stood at the end of that line.
Waiting.
"She tried to run," the First Shadow crooned. "But you? You came home."
Kael's hand closed around Selene's wrist. "Don't listen." His shadows wrapped around her arm, smothering the knife's glow. "It's lying."
But the damage was done.
The altar's bone bars began to sing.
Orric's Last Stand
The warped Alpha struck without warning.
Six hundred pounds of mutated muscle slammed into Kael, carrying them both into the crumbling well. Selene lunged after them, but Cyrus caught her arm.
"Wait!" He pressed her palm against the nearest standing stone...one of thirteen arranged in a forgotten pattern. "The wards. They're still active."
Beneath her fingers, the stone thrummed with residual power. The markings here were different...not containment runes, but sacrificial ones.
Understanding dawned. "They didn't just feed her," Selene whispered. "They bargained."
A wet crunch echoed from the well.
Kael emerged alone, Orric's severed head dangling from his grip. The Alpha's eyes still burned with blue fire, his lips moving soundlessly.
"Finish it," Kael growled, tossing the head toward the altar.
It rolled to a stop at the bone bars.
And the First Shadow laughed.
The Ritual
Three things happened at once,
First, the Blood Moon's light focused into a single beam, igniting the altar.
Second, Orric's head melted, its essence seeping between the bones.
Third, the knife in Selene's hand screamed to life.
Cyrus grabbed Kael's arm. "The wards need blood. Alpha blood."
Kael didn't hesitate. He sliced his palm open on the knife's edge and slapped it against the standing stone.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The thirteen stones flared crimson, their power arcing toward the altar like lightning. The bone cage shuddered, its bars straining as something pushed from within.
Selene's markings blazed white-hot. The knife's hilt fused to her hand, its blade elongating into a jagged shard of primordial darkness.
"Now," the First Shadow whispered...not from the altar, but from inside her. "Strike true, little vessel."
Kael's eyes met hers across the chaos.
She saw the moment he understood.
To seal the breach...
...she'd have to become it.